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1 Richard Gregg and the Power of Nonviolence: The Power of Nonviolence as the unifying animacy of life James Tully J Glenn and Ursula Gray Memorial Lecture Department of Philosophy Colorado College March 1 2016 Introduction I would like to thank Professor Dennis McEnnerney and the Department of Philosophy for inviting me to give the J Glenn and Ursula Gray Memorial Lecture this year. It is a great honour but also a humbling one as I look over the distinguished philosophers who have given this famous lecture in the past. I would also like to thank the students in the Junior Seminar for studying my work this term. It has been a great pleasure to meet with them over the last two days. My objective in this lecture is just to give an introduction to the amazing life and work of Richard Bartlett Gregg, 1885-1974, who, as you know, was born here in Colorado Springs and attended Cutler Academy before moving on the Harvard University. Before I do so, I would like to explain briefly how I came to be interested in Richard Gregg and his classic study of The Power of Nonviolence. Since 2002 I have been working on a relational way of thinking about freedom that I call ‘civic freedom’. I came to the hypothesis that if there is a form of intersubjective freedom in relationships of interdependency with human and non-human living beings, then it would have to be nonviolent. This lead to studying and lecturing on Gandhi and the history of nonviolence. One day in Powell’s bookstore in Portland Oregon I happened to find an edition of Gregg’s The Power of Nonviolence, 1959, with its famous forward by Martin Luther King Jr. I added it to my seminar and began to study it and Gregg’s other writings in the context of his relationship to Gandhi and the nonviolent movements in North America; and to lecture on it here and there over the last few years. At the same time, Quentin Skinner decided to re-open the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series the ‘blue series’ - and publish classic texts that had been missed the first time round, and also to publish texts from non-Western traditions. I suggested that I would like to edit and write a lengthy introduction to Gregg’s The Power of Nonviolence. Quentin Skinner
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Page 1: Richard Gregg and the Power of Nonviolence: The … Richard Gregg and the Power of Nonviolence: The Power of Nonviolence as the unifying animacy of life James Tully J Glenn and Ursula

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Richard Gregg and the Power of Nonviolence:

The Power of Nonviolence as the unifying animacy of life

James Tully

J Glenn and Ursula Gray Memorial Lecture

Department of Philosophy

Colorado College March 1 2016

Introduction

I would like to thank Professor Dennis McEnnerney and the Department of Philosophy for inviting

me to give the J Glenn and Ursula Gray Memorial Lecture this year. It is a great honour but also a

humbling one as I look over the distinguished philosophers who have given this famous lecture in

the past. I would also like to thank the students in the Junior Seminar for studying my work this

term. It has been a great pleasure to meet with them over the last two days.

My objective in this lecture is just to give an introduction to the amazing life and work of

Richard Bartlett Gregg, 1885-1974, who, as you know, was born here in Colorado Springs and

attended Cutler Academy before moving on the Harvard University. Before I do so, I would like

to explain briefly how I came to be interested in Richard Gregg and his classic study of The Power

of Nonviolence.

Since 2002 I have been working on a relational way of thinking about freedom that I call

‘civic freedom’. I came to the hypothesis that if there is a form of intersubjective freedom in

relationships of interdependency with human and non-human living beings, then it would have to

be nonviolent. This lead to studying and lecturing on Gandhi and the history of nonviolence. One

day in Powell’s bookstore in Portland Oregon I happened to find an edition of Gregg’s The Power

of Nonviolence, 1959, with its famous forward by Martin Luther King Jr. I added it to my seminar

and began to study it and Gregg’s other writings in the context of his relationship to Gandhi and

the nonviolent movements in North America; and to lecture on it here and there over the last few

years.

At the same time, Quentin Skinner decided to re-open the Cambridge Texts in the History

of Political Thought series – the ‘blue series’ - and publish classic texts that had been missed the

first time round, and also to publish texts from non-Western traditions. I suggested that I would

like to edit and write a lengthy introduction to Gregg’s The Power of Nonviolence. Quentin Skinner

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agreed and so did two enthusiastic anonymous reviewers. Cambridge received permission from

the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who holds the copyright to the second revised edition (1959),

and I began to work on it.

So, when Professor McEnnerney invited me to give a lecture at Colorado College, in

Gregg’s birthplace, the invitation was both serendipitous and irresistible.

Outline

My lecture is organised in the following way. (1) I begin with a brief survey of Gregg’s life and

work.

(2) I will then suggest that we can see from this survey the distinctive way that Gregg

himself came to question and lose faith in violence and relationships of power-over, which he calls

domination, and to become aware of and gradually persuaded by nonviolence and relationships of

power-with, which he calls integration. This slow ‘conversion experience’ from violence to

nonviolence that Gregg went through in America and India helps us to see how he tries to explain

how the power of nonviolence can not only convert violent individual and group actors to

nonviolence; but how nonviolent resistance also has the capacity to transform the predominantly

violent and dominative civilization of the West into a predominantly nonviolent and non-

dominative civilization.

(3) I will then sketch in quite general terms the tripartite vision that Gregg develops and

refines over his lifetime. The three parts of the vision are of: violent and dominative or power-over

social systems; nonviolent and power-with social systems; and, third, the practices of nonviolence

that have the capacity to move violent actors and systems to resolve their disputes by means of

nonviolence and integration, and thus replace war and violence with nonviolent conflict resolution.

This general vision is called Gregg’s ‘counter-modernity’.

(4) Next, I will present a brief summary of his book, The Power of Nonviolence. In the final

section of the lecture I will examine one feature of his broad vision. This is his famous

phenomenological description of how the power of nonviolent resistance can actually transform

violent struggles into nonviolent contestation and cooperation – by what Gregg calls ‘moral jiu-

jitsu’.

1. Richard Gregg 1885-1974: Life and Works

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1885 born Colorado Springs; his father was a congregational minister; he attended Cutler

Academy

1903 entered Harvard University in science, like father and 3 brothers

1907 graduated and tutored in Massachusetts for one year

1908 entered Harvard Law School

1911 Graduated with LLB, tour of Europe, entered a Boston law firm

1912 Worked for Robert Valentine, Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington

1915 Robert Valentine opened office in Chicago, Gregg joined and worked on labour-

management disputes

1917 US enters WW1, Gregg just over draft age 32

1920s lawyer for railway union,

1922 400,000 go on strike, violent and capital victorious over labour

1924 Runs across Gandhi’s writings in a bookstore in Chicago, interested in his techniques to

counter violence and resolve disputes

1925 Three years in India with Gandhi in Ashram, teaching, spinning, learning: see My

Memories of Gandhi

1928 publishes first two books: A Preparation for Science, and Economics of Khaddar

1928 returns to US, marries

1929 The Psychology and Strategy of Gandhi’s Nonviolent Resistance, (includes Jiu-Jitsu),

edited by Barker in Garland Series (1st book on NV)

1930 Returned with wife to India, met Gandhi again, observed the Salt march

1930 Gandhi’s Satyagraha or Non-violent Resistance (2nd book on nonviolence)

1931 Sends Gandhi’s Satyagraha and Economics of Khaddar to WEB Du Bois

1931 Gandhism and Socialism 1931 and republished as Gandhism versus Socialism 1932

1934 The Power of Nonviolence (3rd book on NV) presented to Gandhi on his birthday

1935 The Power of Nonviolence published in US, becomes the ‘bible of nonviolence’ from 1935

to the 1960s.

1935-36 Acting Director, Pendle Hill, Wallingford Pennsylvania – a Quaker retreat

1936 The Value of Voluntary Simplicity (his famous vision of sustainable living)

1937 Training for Peace, introduction by Aldous Huxley (see Means and Ends)

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1938 Moves to Putney Commons, in Putney Vermont (six families) his first sustainable living

community

1939 A Pacifist Program in Time of War

1942 CORE uses PNV against racial discrimination; Bayard Rufus

1943 WEB Du Bois & Ralph Templin of Harlem Ashram debate violence and nonviolence

Crisis

1944 Publishes second edition of Power of Nonviolence, introduction by Rufus Jones, Quaker

philosopher at Haverford. Published by Fellowship of Reconciliation, which also published

many of his articles in their journal, Fellowship

1948 Moves to organic farming with Helen and Scott Nearing near Jamaica, Vermont, 65 acres,

builds a house with Nearings; and practices nonviolent sustainable living, human scale

technology, cyclical economics, ecoliteracy, and solar power (Nearings move to Maine in

the 1950s)

1950s Glen Smiley distributes PNV to Black Colleges, MLK’s ‘Pilgrimage to NV’ uses Gregg’s

terms in the last section

1952 Which Way Lies Hope: an examination of capitalism, communism, socialism and Gandhi’s

programme (that is, his alternative sustainable modernity)

1953 The Structure of Nonviolent Society, short article: nonviolent resistance leaves people

“hanging in mid-air” unless it is based in ethics, sustainable communities & participatory

democracy (swadeshi and swaraj)

1955 Sends copy of PNV to MLK (1944)

1956 A Compass for Civilization (Boston)

1958 A Philosophy of Indian Economic Development, (sustainable economics) sends to MLK

1959 Power of Nonviolence, 2nd revised edition, Forward by MLK, reprint 1960

1960 SNCC uses Power of Nonviolence

1962 An Idea Whose Time Has Come, short article

1960s The Best Solver of Conflicts and Satyagraha as a Mirror, two short articles in Gandhi: His

relevance for our times, and he continues to lecture

1966 First Schocken edition of Power of Nonviolence

1974 Dies of neurological disease

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2 Gregg’s journey from violence to nonviolence

In a short unpublished essay, entitled My Memories of Gandhi, Gregg reflects on his path from

violence and capitalism to nonviolence and Gandhian economics. I think we can see this path in

the brief outline of his life and works I have just given. And I think that we can see the same

pattern worked out in his general vision that I will explore in the following section.

When Gregg first travelled to India with his brother in 1911 he found India to be

uninteresting and backward relative to the West. Then, his years as a labour lawyer during the

railway strikes raised doubts and questions about both the power of capital over labour and of the

use of violence, or the background threat of violence, to resolve disputes. These doubts called into

question his unreflective faith in Western civilization. When he came across Gandhi’s writings in

a Chicago bookshop he was introduced to an alternative form of ethics, self-government, economic

organisation and conflict resolution. All are manifestations of the animating power of nonviolence.

And so he went to India and moved into Gandhi’s ashram in 1925.

Here he participated in Gandhi’s nonviolent way of life for three years. He wore Indian

clothes, practised the ethics of karmayoga meditation, engaged in self-sustaining, village-based

agriculture and hand spinning, nonviolent relationships with humans and the environment

(Swadeshi), voluntary simplicity, and local participatory self-government (Swaraj), all oriented to

the well-being of all members (human and non-human) (Sarvodaya). He underwent a radical self-

transformation.1

In this context, Gandhi asked him to write his first of many books on local, self-sustaining

communities based on cyclical economics; their relation to the participants’ material and moral

needs; and to the sustainability of the ecosystems they inhabit. At the same time he wrote the

preliminary studies of how nonviolent conflict resolution works in practice to transform violent

adversaries into nonviolent partners in a new form of dispute resolution.

When he returned to the United States, he not only continued to write about a mode of

economic organisation based on nonviolent relationships with each other and the living earth and

on nonviolent conflict resolution. But, crucially, he also continued to ground himself in the

nonviolent practices he was writing about. He moved to Vermont and self-sustaining communities

1 He described this self-transformation in terms very similar to the way Franz Boas described the self-transformation of the participatory anthropologist.

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of practice with Scott and Helen Nearing and he wrote his classic text, The Value of Voluntary

Simplicity, as well as his later economic works. And, he continued to lecture and train people in

the practices of nonviolent resistance.

Thus, as he always emphasised, nonviolence is grounded in ethical self-change, and self-

change is grounded in practice. The whole ‘other world’ or civilization of nonviolence and its

possibilities are disclosed to us only through freeing oneself from the predominant system and

beginning to practice a nonviolent ethos and participate in the subaltern communities in all areas

of life – what Gandhi called ‘experiments in truth’. And, as he and Gandhi emphasize, the

transformation does not happen immediately, but, rather, the light dawns slowly over the whole,

consisting of both practice and self-awareness of the essential unity of all forms of life.

Gregg knew about this relationship between being and knowing from William James and

Aldous Huxley, as well as from his own religious background, but he also knew about it from his

own lived experience. And this transformation experience provided a basis for all his writings, to

which I now turn.

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3 Gregg’s Vision of the Power of Violence and Nonviolence

Now, I would like to sketch out Gregg’s vision of the power of violence and nonviolence in broad

strokes. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that I think the broad vision of violence

and nonviolence follows from his own lived experience as I have just summarised. The second

reason is that when most people think of nonviolence they think of episodic techniques of

nonviolent resistance (or direct action) to strike, boycott, non-cooperate, protest, and so on, to

overthrow an unjust power-holder, to change a law, to force opponents to the negotiating table,

and so on. These are certainly aspects of nonviolent resistance for Gandhi and Gregg. But, they

are just manifestations of a much larger ground or permaculture of nonviolent power relations that

provide the basis and animacy of these techniques.

That is to say, since the rise of technique-based nonviolent resistance with Gene Sharp and

others since the 1970s, people tend to see the ‘trees’ (episodic nonviolent actions) and overlook

the ‘forest’ (the nonviolent ways of being in the world with others in all our activities that is the

ground of these nonviolent actions in so far as they are ‘effective’ in the Gandhi-Gregg sense of

‘transformative’. So, I want to take one step back from the trees – the isolated incidents of

nonviolent action – and sketch the forest – the more basic permaculture of nonviolent relationships

out of which nonviolent direct action is a growth or manifestation. (This ‘trees and forest’ analogy

is used by Gregg).

3.1 Two modes of power: nonviolence and power-with and violence and power-over

For Gandhi and Gregg, there are two very general modes of power: the power of violence

and domination (power-over [or ruler-ruled]) and the power of nonviolence and spontaneous

cooperation (power-with [or participatory democracy]). In modern industrial and post-industrial

societies, we are entangled in both modes of power in their varieties of concrete forms. However,

relations of violent and dominative power tend to be paramount and these are the ones that we tend

to foreground and to take as the model of all forms of power (as Arendt argued in On Violence).

According to Gandhi and Gregg, Western imperialism and colonialism spread their distinctive

forms of violence and domination around the world. They triggered the increase of violent forms

of power in the colonized world in counter-resistance and revolutions of decolonization; and these

in turn have boomerang effects on the imperial powers.

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But, if we focus exclusively on these forms of human relationships, we overlook another

mode of power that exists within all societies and which sustains life on earth. This is the power

of nonviolence and spontaneous cooperation. In the long run, these nonviolent interdependent,

symbiotic relationships of mutual aid and conflict resolution are actually the major factor in human

and non-human evolution. If this were not the case, as both Gandhi and Gregg roundly suggest,

‘the human race would long ago ceased to exist.’ There is, Gregg claims, ‘sound biological,

psychological and historical evidence for this belief.’ (PNV 71)

3.2 Nonviolence

So, let’s begin with the power of nonviolence. This is the power that runs through and

unites all forms of life. It ‘animates’ and ‘sustains’ life. It is called by various names: ahimsa

(nonviolence), spirit, unity, love, loving kindness, mutual aid, spontaneous cooperation, biophilia,

symbiosis, autopoiesis and so on. As Gandhi puts it, interdependent relationships of love, of

‘being-with’, are ‘the ground of our being’. In explicating it, Gregg says that if you find the term

‘love’ too sentimental, then think of it as ‘a sort of intelligence or knowledge.’ (PNV 49) The

point is that ‘love’, in the sense that Gandhi, Gregg and Martin Luther King use it, ‘involves the

very principle and essence of continuity of life itself’. (PNV 50) ‘Life is the power [or animacy]

of life itself’. (PNV 63, 117)

It is an intersubjective mode of power that comes into being when we begin to think and

act together in what social scientists call practices of ‘spontaneous cooperation’ or ‘integration’.

(PNV 58, 172, WWLH)

Gregg always said that his major task was to translate and explain this mode of power he

learned from living with Gandhi into terms understandable and persuasive to westerners from

within their traditions and disciplines. His writings use psychology, economics, philosophy,

history, political science, sociology, military strategy, natural science, biology and religion to carry

on this lifelong project.

The power of nonviolence, as we have seen, runs though and animates all human activities

to widely varying degrees, including those structured predominantly by relations of violence and

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domination. The editor of one of the first collections of Gandhi’s essays on nonviolent resistance

for a Western audience puts this basic point in the following way:2

Satyagraha or nonviolent resistance, as conceived by Gandhiji, has an important lesson for pacifists

and war-resisters of the West. Gandhiji showed that non-violence to be effective requires constructive

effort in every sphere of life, individual, social, economic and political. These spheres have to be

organised and refashioned in such a way that the people will have learnt to be non-violent in their

daily lives, manage their affairs on a cooperative and nonviolent basis, and thus have acquired

sufficient strength and resourcefulness to be able to offer nonviolent resistance against organised

violence. The practice of nonviolence in the political sphere is not, therefore, a mere matter of

preaching or even of establishing arbitration courts or Leagues of Nations, but involves building up

brick by brick with patience and industry a new nonviolent social and economic order. It depends

ultimately on banishing violence from the heart of the individual, and making of him a transformed

disciplined person. Gandhiji’s contribution lay in evolving the necessary technique and showing by

example how all this can be done.

This is precisely how Gregg described his own project in his books and pamphlets on ethics,

training, economics, technology, self-government, ecoliteracy and solar power.

That is, the power of nonviolent resistance and direct action is only one manifestation of the

broader field of the power of nonviolence. ‘Nonviolent resistance in its complete form’, he writes,

‘is a dramatization of the idea of essential human unity.’ (PNV 57) Nonviolent resistance

(Satyagraha), as he explicates it is the way that people who are already trained participants in,

organised in accordance with, and so animated by relationships of the power of nonviolence in

their ethos, economic activity, self-government, and interdependent relations with the living earth,

confront and contest people who are organised in accord with the power of violence and relations

of domination (power-over).

Their objective is to persuade their violent adversaries, by nonviolent means, to see and

experience the superiority of the nonviolent way of life they manifest; and to move around to

resolve their differences by nonviolent means (integration); and so to convert to a nonviolent way

of life more generally. But, nonviolent activists are only able to do this only if they are already

participants and practitioners in nonviolent ways of life in their everyday activities and thus

animated by the power of nonviolence to withstand and transform the violence of their opponents.

As he says in ‘The Structure of a Nonviolent Society’, if you only focus on the examples,

2 Bharatan Kumarappa, Editor’s note, M.K. Gandhi, Non-Violent Resistance (Satyagraha),

New York: Schocken Books, 1961 [1951], v.

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techniques and strategies of interaction he sets out in The Power of Nonviolence you will be ‘left

hanging in the air’. That is, it overlooks the ground of a nonviolent way of life that gives nonviolent

resistance campaigns their strength and sustainability. He calls this foundation ‘another

civilization’ in the making, and more important than the campaigns.

3.3 Violence

Let us now turn to Gregg’s view of the power of violence, domination and exploitation. Just

as the power of nonviolent conflict resolution is the manifestation of the whole nonviolent way of

life in which it is grounded; so also the solving of conflicts by reciprocal violence and the

imposition of power-over the defeated party is the manifestation of the violent way of life in which

it is grounded. This is a way of life that is founded in violence and the coercive imposition of

power-over nature and human nature relationships (command-obedience, ruler-ruled, and

hegemon-subaltern relationships) and the resolution of disputes by coercion in the last instance.

Resistance to injustices in this form of social system tend in response to take the mirror-image

form of violent revolution organised in command-obedience relationships, and thus reproduce its

basic form in the successor regime. This is Gandhi’s famous argument in Hind Swaraj (1909) and

Gregg’s in Gandhism versus Socialism (1932) and later texts. Gregg’s analysis of this mode of

power, as power-over, is indebted to D.W. Harding, The Impulse to Dominate, 1941, and Elton

Mayo’s empirical studies of work relations in, The Social and Political Problems of Industrial

Civilization, 1945.

As Gregg argues in Which Way Lies Hope? (1956), this is the paramount mode of power in

centralised state capitalism, socialism, and communism. It is also the basic structure of

imperialism, racism, and relations of inequality more generally. If it is not transformed, he argues

in his writings of the 1950s and 1960s, it will lead to ever more destructive wars and violent

revolutions, the plunder of the resources of the planet, and the self-destruction of the human

species. His most detailed treatment of resource depletion, soil erosion, population pressure, and

deepening inequality between the global north and south is in his A Philosophy of Indian Economic

Development, 1958. In all these books, Gregg presents Gandhian, community-based ethics,

economics, technology, and nonviolent local, participatory self-government as the sustainable

alternative for the future. When he sent WEB Dubois a copy of The Power of Nonviolence in 1940

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he also sent him his early work on economics. And he sent A Philosophy of Indian Economic

Development to Martin Luther King along with The Power of Nonviolence.

Note that these works were all written before the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth (1970),

Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle, 1971, and Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (1980).

Moreover, his alternative, Gandhian economics and ecology, anticipates Fritz Schumacher’s Small

is Beautiful, (1971), and the turn to sustainable communities that are designed in accordance with

the way that “life sustains life” in ecosystems and the Gaia system as a whole. In many respects,

Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, 1949, is a forerunner to Gregg’s views on ethics,

economics and ecology.

3.4 Contrasting assumptions

Gregg argues that violent and nonviolent social systems are based on contrasting

assumptions. The power of nonviolence is based on the assumption of a spiritual or animating

unity of life in relationships of interdependency and mutual aid that is more fundamental than our

differences. Spontaneous nonviolent cooperation is seen as prior to competition; trust is prior to

distrust and love to hate. These qualities exist in greater or less strength in every person and can

be developed by self-training and working together. (PNV 49, 55) These are all aspects of the

power of nonviolence.

In contrast, the basic assumptions of the power of violence is that humans are separate or

independent beings (autonomous). As a result distrust is prior to trust, and competition and

aggression are prior to cooperation and peace. The coercive imposition of power-over relationships

(domination) is necessary to establish order (civilization) and cooperation. Coercively constrained

competition is the driver of human development. (PNV 131-4)

In addition, these two ways of life have diametrically opposed assumptions about the relation

between means and ends. The power of nonviolence rests on the assumption that the means

prefigure and give rise to the ends, as the seed to the flower. It follows that the only way to a

nonviolent relationship and world is by nonviolent means in each step we take. (PNV 174) Thus

all effective change towards peace and justice begins with ethics as ethos – with being nonviolent

in everything one says and does – whether in our everyday life and the technological means we

use, and in confronting a violent adversary (PNV 147). This is probably the most fundamental and

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best known feature of Gandhi-Gregg nonviolence ever since it was analyzed by Joan Bondurant

and HJN Horsburgh in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as by Karuna Mantena more recently.

Moreover, as a person begins to act and interact nonviolently with others, they not only free

themselves from the violent and dominative ways of acting and interacting. They begin to connect

with and be supported and moved by the power of nonviolence that animates all life. He likens

this to learning to swim - where the learner gradually learns that the water can support and sustain

his or her efforts (PNV 143-4)

On this constitutive view of means and ends, violence and domination do not lead to justice

and peace, but to counter-violence and counter-domination. Violent victory over an opponent

suppresses the conflict but does not resolve it, feeding resentment and further conflict.

The objective of nonviolent resistance, therefore, is not victory over an opponent, voluntary

submission or even compromise. Rather the aim is to transform the violent adversary and the

relationship with them into a nonviolent partner in a nonviolent relationship of exercising power

together. Gregg explains in detail how this is possible in the central chapters of all editions of The

Power of Nonviolence. (PNV CH 2-4) This radical kind of transformation is possible because the

power of nonviolent ‘persuasion’ is more powerful than ‘force’.

The power of violence, in contrast, rests on the assumption that means are contingently

related to ends. Vicious or immoral means can lead to virtuous or moral ends War, violence and

domination are the means to peace, democracy and justice. This is the basic assumption of modern

civilization according to Gandhi and Gregg (as well as Arendt), advanced by Hobbes, Kant, Hegel,

Marx, Mill, Darwin, Freud, Fanon and the theory and practice of development, modernization and

conflict resolution today. Gandhi and Gregg were among the first to call it into question; followed

by Einstein, Huxley, King, Camus, Arendt, and nonviolent social scientists and millions of anti-

war and nonviolent activists today. Yet, the assumption persists in theory and practice.

William James was a supporter of nonviolence, but he argued that the nonviolent movement

had to persuade people that nonviolence could provide Americans with a ‘moral equivalent of

war’. In the interwar years. Walter Lippmann argued that they also had to persuade people that

nonviolence provides a ‘political equivalent of war’, and thus could replace war and violence as

the means of resolving conflicts. It is not too much to say that the main purpose of Gregg in The

Power of Nonviolence was to do exactly this. He lays out his analysis of the power of nonviolence

and then devotes an entire chapter to responding to James and Lippmann.

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3.5 Gregg’s Two Tasks

If this brief overview of Gregg’s vision of the power of nonviolence and violence is

reasonably accurate, then it follows that Gregg had two main tasks. The first, as we have seen, is

to show how nonviolent resistance can transform violent adversaries and resolve conflicts, and

thereby gradually replace war and domination. This is the main task of The Power of Nonviolence.

The second task is to show that the transformative power of nonviolent conflict resolution only

works if it is grounded in the broader nonviolent, everyday life of its practitioners – of ethics,

training, community-based participatory democracy, economic self-reliance and ecoliteracy. It is

this self-sustaining nonviolent alternative-modernity that provides the basis for the dramatic

campaigns of nonviolent resistance and for the gradual, intergenerational transformation of violent

social systems by means of what he calls ‘persuasion’.

It is important to realize that the long chapter on Persuasion only appeared in the 1944

edition. The earlier versions did not even mention it. I think he initially assumed with Gandhi that

practitioners could learn nonviolent techniques relatively quickly and that nonviolent direct action

would work relatively quickly to convert opponents and bystanders. Both assumptions turned out

to be false in practice. This led many to believe that nonviolence itself was falsified in practice.

‘Forget Gandhi’, as David Dallinger put it. This led many people either to a return to violence or

to take nonviolence as simply an amoral episodic technique to act up, protest or overthrow and

replace unjust rulers by types of noncooperation. From the Gandhi-Gregg perspective, this type of

nonviolence is amoral and ineffective; at best only replacing the power-holders in structures of

domination and exploitation. Thus, from 1944 on, against this current, Gregg had to show that

Gandhian nonviolence can be genuinely transformative, but only if it is grounded in the nonviolent

ways of life he sets out in the new training chapters; and only if we take the longer view of

cumulative change and systemic transformation he sets out in the 1944 and 1959 editions.

4. The Power of Nonviolence: an outline

With this general vision in mind, let’s turn to a brief outline of the 1959 edition of The Power of

Nonviolence.

In the Preface he states that his objective is to explain the power of nonviolent resistance

to solve conflicts and to show its applicability in the West today; in an age of the H bomb, total

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war and the rapid exploitation of the earth’s resources. He says that the term ‘nonviolent resistance’

seems ‘self-contradictory’ to most Westerners accustomed to power politics. Moreover, Gandhi’s

explanations of nonviolence have not been very effective in the West because they come from a

very different culture. His task is thus to make nonviolence understandable to a Western audience

and to show that it is ‘application in any country, at any time, under any circumstances and for any

cause’. He states:

For in reality this matter of handling conflict constructively is of immediate concern to

everyone who has ever been angry or afraid, resentful, revengeful or bitter; who has ever

taken part in a fight, mob violence or war; or who has been the object of anger, hatred,

exploitation or oppression. It touches all those who are troubled lest the vast economic,

political and social questions that are pressing upon all nations will issue in still more

appalling violence and increased insecurity for everyone, or even destruction of the human

race. It is also important to those who hope that somehow the ideals of mankind can be made

practical and harmonized with its conduct.

Military power thrives on partial and antagonistic unities based in ‘fear, pride, anger, hate and

lies.’ The power of nonviolence is a greater power because it is based on ‘the unity of the human

species’ animated by ‘love and the desire for justice’. It can overcome ‘all differences of race,

nationality, ideology or culture’.

Accordingly, the book not only shows how nonviolence works and grows, but also how it

connects humans with this underlying power that sustains all life.

The book begins with examples of nonviolence from the early 20th century to Montgomery.

These examples show that nonviolence is not a theory, but a practice (experiments in truth) – and

it works. The next three chapters are his famous detailed analysis of the interaction between violent

and non-violent actors, so we see how nonviolence works to transform the violent adversary into

a partner in nonviolent dispute resolution and cooperation. The next two chapters show how the

analysis of individual actors in the first three chapters can be used to explain how large-scale

nonviolent movements can transform violent actors and violent social systems into nonviolent

social systems (chapters 5-6).

He then argues that the analysis so far provides a definitive answer to the challenges posed

by William James and Walter Lippmann (in Chapter 7).

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In the next chapter on nonviolence and the state Gregg argues that states and diplomacy

cannot bring peace, justice and freedom to the world, based as they are on violence and domination.

Only building citizen-based, grass-roots global networks of nonviolent communities and

nonviolent resistance can do this. In so doing, citizens can also modify and change the structure of

states by nonviolent means in the long run. Chapter 9 on Persuasion sets out his basic view that

the power of nonviolence unifies, animates and sustains all forms of life by means of ‘persuasion’

rather than ‘force’. He explains this in terms of stimulus-response psychology and Gestalt

psychology and early systems theory. It is employed to show how large-scale transformative social

change from a violent to a nonviolent civilization can be brought about by the cumulative effects

of small steps creating a critical mass and tipping points. He suggests that this transformative

power of persuasion in human lifeways is analogous to growth and transformation in ecological

earthways. This whole line of argument is developed more fully in his most philosophical book,

Compass for Civilization, 1956.

In the last two chapters he argues that for this great transformation to happen, training

grounded in democratic communities of nonviolent practice and lifeways are absolutely necessary.

That is, these chapters re-introduce the practical and moral foundations of nonviolence that he first

experienced in living with Gandhi in India.

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5. The Power of Nonviolence and Moral Jiu-Jitsu

Bearing this overview in mind, I would like to conclude with a brief synopsis of the most famous

section of The Power of Nonviolence. This is the chapters in which he analyzes the complex

dialogical interaction between nonviolent and violent actors. His objective is to show how

nonviolent actors are able to move violent actors around to see and experience the superiority of

nonviolent conflict resolution; to engage with it and be transformed into it; and so to step into a

nonviolent way of life and be animated by the spiritual power of nonviolence. He describes this

complex interaction in chapters 2-5 and calls it ‘moral jiu-jitsu’. He describes it further dimensions

of it in chapters 7 and 9, but I will focus on chapters 2-5.

Gregg says that his aim in chapters 2-5 is to show the sceptics ‘how nonviolent resistance

works’. (PNV 43). There are three dimensions of nonviolent resistance he hopes to clarify. The

first is to show nonviolent resistance as a dramatic manifestation of the spiritual power of

nonviolence in general, so it displays many of the main aspects of this mode of power, which is,

as we have seen, the greatest power on earth – the power of life itself. Second, the chapters

explicate the way of nonviolence in contestation with violent power; how it is different from, and

superior to violent power – and thus can replace war and violence. Third, given the constitutive

relation between means and ends, nonviolence is the only way to a peaceful world.

5.1 Gandhi’s Satyagraha

‘The power of nonviolent resistance’ is Gregg’s translation of Gandhi’s ‘Satyagraha’ or ‘soul-

power’. It has four main features according to Gandhi. First, the exercise of Satyagraha is the

manifestation of truthfulness (satya means truth). That is, the practitioner always acts truthfully

and openly. But ‘sat’ also means ‘being’, and so the practitioner is trying always to act in

accordance with the truth of our being: namely; the ground of our being in living relationships of

reciprocal love.

The second dimension of soul-power is ahimsa (nonviolence). Ahimsa means

‘nonviolence’ in both the negative sense of non-harm to all forms of life and the positive sense of

active compassion towards all forms of life.

Third, soul-power also involves ‘self-sacrifice’: that is, to have the courage to confront

injustice and violence with truthfulness, nonviolence and love, even if it means our suffering and

death at the hands of a violent adversary. Hence, nonviolent resistance is the instrument of the

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strong and courageous, not the weak and cowardly, for it takes more courage to act against injustice

without harming others than to kill others. If you do not have the courage to act nonviolently

against injustice and violence, Gandhi and Gregg argue, then you should resist with violence, as a

soldier does, which requires a weaker from of courage than nonviolence, but is still more

courageous than the cowardliness of doing nothing.

Fourth, nonviolent resistance is always a practical and imperfect ‘experiment in truth’ – in

exercising nonviolence, learning from each experiment how it works, and improving the art of

nonviolence for the next exercise; and thus gradually building up a knowledge of the arts and

sciences of nonviolence for future generations.

The reason why the nonviolent actor comports him or herself in this way with respect to a

violent and unjust adversary is that we must always treat another human being with respect and

dignity, and not as a thing to be manipulated by force or fraud. As Martin Luther King Jr puts it in

his Foreword to The Power of Nonviolence: ‘I hope it [The Power of Nonviolence] gets a wide

readership, particularly among those, in this country and throughout the world, who are seeking

ways of achieving full social, personal and political freedom in a manner consistent with human

dignity’. Moreover, this nonviolent way of recognising and respecting the dignity of the other is

also acting in accordance with and sustain the spiritual unity of all human beings (our

‘interdependent’ or ‘higher’ self, as Gregg puts it).

5.2 Gregg’s nonviolent jiu-jitsu

Gregg is in complete agreement with Gandhi on these constitutive qualities of the ethos of

the nonviolent actor. As he writes: (PNV 49)

[The nonviolent actor] must have primarily that disposition best known as love – an interest

in people so deep, and determined, and lasting as to be creative; a profound knowledge of or

faith in the ultimate possibilities of human nature; a courage based upon a conscious or

subconscious realization of the underlying unity of all life and eternal values or eternal life

of the human spirit; a strong and deep desire for an love of truth; and a humility that is not

cringing or self-deprecatory or timid but is rather a truer sense of proportion in regard to

people, things, qualities, and ultimate values. These human traits of love, faith, courage,

honesty and humility exist in greater or less strength in every person. By self-training and

discipline they can be developed sufficiently to make a good NV soldier out of any human

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being….Love is the most important of all these qualities of nonviolent person; it may even

be considered the origin of all the others.

However, Gregg extends the focus to the complex intersubjective interaction between the

nonviolent actor and the violent opponent. When the nonviolent actor confronts a violent opponent

with a nonviolent, way of relating to each other and resolving disputes, this alternative way of

being begins to influence the violent actor, both consciously and subconsciously. It sets into

motion the complex set of processes and interactions that Gregg calls suggestion, persuasion,

conversion and integration. Gregg’s genius was to disclose and compare this complex phenomenon

with the game and arts of jiu-jitsu.

Gregg distinguishes between ‘physical’ jiu-jitsu and ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ nonviolent jiu-

jitsu. The central feature of nonviolent ‘physical’ jiu-jitsu is that the nonviolent jiu-jitsu master

neither flees nor fights the violent opponent directly, but, rather, maneuvers in such ways that the

violent attacker’s own actions work against him; constantly causing him to lose his poise, balance,

self-confidence and energy. The violent adversary comes to realize that he cannot win this contest

in the conventional way: that is, by victory over a symmetrically violent opponent, as in the

standard military model. In the 1935 edition Gregg cites the manual on physical jiu-jitsu from

which he learned this:

‘Don’t resist when your opponent pushes you; rather increase your pace in that direction and

pull him a little at the same time. Don’t let him ever get the strain on you but go with him, if

anything a little faster than his pull would cause you to. By following this precept you

are…almost catching your balance before he wishes you to lose it, while he is losing his and

is without the aid of your resistance – on which he has been more or less depending to help

him regain his balance. Thus in an easy and simply manner you neutralize his efforts to get

you off your balance, and at the same time create a favorable opportunity of effecting a

throw, by keeping him off his’ (PNV 1935 254)

Gregg argues that nonviolent actors interact with violent opponents in similar ‘physical’

ways in their short and long term tactics and strategies, and with their repertoire of techniques,

such as protests, marches, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, and noncooperation. He discusses these

maneuvers in chapter 2 and more fully in the chapter on strategy. He notes that this way of coping

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with difficult situations in everyday life is quite common: neither flight nor fight, but coping (PNV

57).

However, he is primarily concerned with the psychological, mental, emotional and

especially moral processes that are involved in all the activities of nonviolent physical jiu-jitsu.

He calls these processes moral jiu-jitsu. This is what he is famous for in the history of nonviolence.

His main point is, citing William James, that since the actions of nonviolent physical jiu-jitsu are

infused with psychological, mental, emotional and moral processes, we can understand how

nonviolent resistance can work effectively only if we understand these processes. He points out

that all the great military strategists also have been concerned with winning the ‘hearts and minds’

of their opponents and have seen this ‘moral’ contest as more important than the physical contest.

The analogy with jiu-jitsu shows how misleading it is to call nonviolent action ‘resistance’.

It is the whole complex arts and game of reciprocal interaction between nonviolent and violent

actors that goes through a number of stages to the creative transformation of the antagonistic

relationship between them into a nonviolent relationship of mutual respect in which they resolve

their differences and go on to cooperate together. I cannot do justice to Gregg’s analysis here. I

will just mention the main steps.

5.3 Moral jiu-jitsu

The violent actor acts on the assumption that the nonviolent actor will respond with fear or

anger and thus respond with flight or fight. He (or she) expects this kind of interaction and knows

it well through his training and experience. But, this is not what happens. Instead, the nonviolent

opponent is fearless, calm, and steady because of training, belief and experience. She or he exhibits

self-control and does not respond with counter-violence. Moreover, she accepts blows with a good

temper, states her desire to find out the truth of the dispute and to examine both sides, and to abide

by the outcome.

Moreover, he or she proves her sincerity by accepting suffering rather than inflicting it on others,

with no fear or resentment. Rather than fear, anger and retaliation, he or she manifests great

courage that the violent attacker has not seen before.

The cumulative effects of this interaction on the violent actor is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu

analogous to physical jiu-jitsu. The violent attacker loses his moral balance. ‘He suddenly and

unexpectedly loses the moral support which the usual violent or resentful resistance of most

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victims would render him. In Gregg’s nice wording, he plunges forward, as it were, into a new

world of values.’ (P {NV 44) The attacker is surprised, feels insecure and unsure how to proceed,

whereas the nonviolent actor retains poise and balance.

As the interactions continue, the violent actor begins to lose his assurance in the moral

worth of his own mode of comportment in contrast with the nonviolent alternative in front of him,

and relative to the gaze and reactions of onlookers. He begins to entertain the idea that he might

be confronted with a way of life that is higher than mere physical force; that the power of

nonviolence may be a higher realization of human nature – ‘perhaps the manifestation of some

ultimate powers in the background of life itself. (PNV 46) The refusal of the nonviolent actor to

use violence against her opponent shows her trust and respect for the personality and moral

integrity of the violent opponent, and these qualities of trust and respect have a powerful effect on

the opponent.

These factors and more, Gregg argues, create in the very personality of the opponent a

‘strong new impulse that is incompatible with his previous tendency’. This new suggestion does

not conflict with his previous tendency, but diverts and absorbs its energy so that it is even more

powerful. Persuasion and conversion are brought about nonviolently by creating this kind counter

tendency within the thought, imagination and emotional make-up of the adversary. ‘This is ‘the

wisest psychological dynamic and moral strategy’. This internal counter-tendency is the intimation

of the self-sustaining or autopoietic power of life itself, in dramatic contrast to the life-destroying

power of violence (PNV 52)

Gregg states that this transformative kind of moral jiu-jitsu is only possible due to the moral

character and conduct of the nonviolent practitioner. ‘The art of jiu-jitsu’, is based on a knowledge

of balance and how to disturb it. In a struggle of moral jiu-jitsu, the retention of moral equilibrium

seems to depend upon the qualities of one’s relationship to moral truth. Hence, part of the superior

power of the nonviolent resister seems to lie in the nature of his character or ethos, as we have

seen above (PNV 49)

Once the violent opponent realises that the nonviolent actor does not wish to humiliate,

crush or conquer, but to work out their dispute in a relationship of mutual respect, the violent

opponent sees that there is a way to re-establish his equilibrium at a higher level of existence

without losing face. (PNV 58). This introduces the phase of nonviolent negotiation and conflict

resolution that Gregg calls ‘integration’. He takes this term from Mary Follett. This is not the

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voluntary submission of one side, the struggle and victory of one side over another, or a

compromise. It is a fourth way to solve conflict. It consists in trying to work out together a creative

solution, or series of successive solutions that takes into account the suffering and well-being of

all affected and tries to finds ways to satisfy them. There has been an enormous amount of work

on nonviolent contestation, negotiation, resolution and cooperation since 1959. However, I think

that there are three features of Gregg’s analysis that remain relevant.

The first is his view that the transformation of the contest between nonviolent and violent

actors into nonviolent negotiation is what he calls a ‘sublimation’, ‘reconciliation’ and ‘inclusive

syntheses of the energy of both parties. In violent versus nonviolent struggles the partners use their

energy in opposition to each other. Not as much energy is wasted as in violent struggles, but it is

still immensely wasteful, enervating and exhausting, especially for the violent partner. In contrast,

what happens in the transformation to nonviolent negotiations is the realisation that they can

combine their energy by working and acting together: that is, the emergence of ‘spontaneous

cooperation’. Gregg puts it this way in this chapter on ‘utilizing emotional energy’ PNV 63):

Love [nonviolence] means using in the moral sphere the principle of the resolution of forces,

known to every schoolboy who has studied physics, instead of the wasteful principle of direct

opposition and consequent waste of energy, which produces unsatisfactory and only

temporary results. Love does something better than conquer, for conquest implies

destruction, submission and suppression. Love is more intelligent and tries not to allow any

energy to go to waste.

Today, I imagine that we would call the transformation to negotiating-together in this way the

‘emergent property’ of self-organisation (autopoiesis).

The second point he makes is that this kind of negotiation or integration requires love in

the sense of empathy and compassion of each participant in dialogue-with each other if they are to

really understand the suffering of each and work out the appropriate ways to well-being in mutual

response. It cannot be a pre-packaged model of transitional justice from dictatorship to

representative democracy, for this is just the exercise of domination (power-over) of the more

powerful partners in a new form.3

3 See the work of Anthon Simon Laden, especially Reasoning: A social Picture, OUP, 2012, and the discussions we have in On Global Citizenship and Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context. I have tried to synthesize this work in Trust, Mistrust and Distrust in Diverse Societies (forthcoming).

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Gregg’s final point is that this form of negotiation is itself the manifestation of a nonviolent

way of life – of ongoing nonviolent contestation and cooperation. In engaging in it, the participants

are beginning to bring into being a nonviolent way of life together and be animated by the power

that animates and sustains life on earth. And, as he argues in the chapter on Persuasion, and as he

learned in Gandhi’s ashram, this is how the power of nonviolence grows – step by step.

6. Conclusion

I there is time, I would like to read a quotation from the chapter on training that summarises

Gregg’s whole outlook as I understand it. It is entitled ‘digging deeper’. He begins by say that ‘we

must, in order to prevent war, democratically and without violence, change that society from its

very foundations and throughout its entire structure and motivation’. He then goes on to describe

what this means:

It is a means of building up a conscious purpose and practice of mutuality and friendly

cooperation. It is a method of increasing social integration, of enlarging the opportunities

for effectively taking part in the total life of the community. It is a way of developing the

sentiments, motives and mutual trust and moral power needed to carry us without violence

through the vast changes that are coming so swiftly, a way to make a beginning of effective,

remedial economic action, to bring about wise changes, and to support the new forms of

society and assure that they will be better than what we now have. We must build a much

stronger moral foundation for society than we now have.

To end war and violence means have a better world, but that is impossible unless the people

in it grow better. Those who are endeavoring to abolish war, therefore, must themselves

strive hard to become better people by living better lives. Even if one says that it is the evil

framework of society that must be changed before the mass of people can become better,

it remains true, that, in order to gain sufficient influence, trust and power to win a big

following and cause the change, the leaders who aspire to alter that bad system must

themselves become better men and women than they were before.

We have more control over our own character than we have over the external forms of

society. So we must begin with ourselves, knowing that to the extent that we can win self-

control and strength in the qualities needed for this struggle, we will begin to be able to

modify society.

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